Many folks are from outside of nashville . noise how many people here are from outside of the country . Weve got a few in the back. Nice. Well, my name is steven, im the founder and president of the millennial action project, were a national Nonpartisan Organization working with young elected officials to bridge the political divides in our country and to enact systemic reforms to make our democracy function better. Today, weve got an amazing discussion lined up for all of you with two of the leading political commentators in our country, so lets bring them out. First of all, we have writer, commentator and author of 13 New York Times best sellers sellers, ann coulter, give her a round of applause. applause do i go there . Right in the middle. Thank you. And another writer and commentator and writer at the atlantic, give a big round of applause for david fromm. applause all right. How are we feeling . Great, so good to be here. Excellent. Well, i commented that both of you are authors and david in the past, youve actually commented about anns book on immigration, that it was perhaps one of the most politically influential books in our country around the issue of immigration. So let me start with you, david. Why did you make that comment . Well, i said it was the most directly politically influential because ann had written this book about immigration that donald trump had read. Donald trump at that point was known for really one point of view, which is his advocacy of trade protectionism. That had been the signature issue since the80s. I think he found anns book and found his idea and that was the idea that he rode to overcome the republican field. What had happened in the aftermath of the Great Recession was that Republican Voters had decided what we want is more healthcare, less immigration, and no more bushes. And the republican establishment said right, got it, more immigration, less healthcare, and one more bush. And so it was a rotten floorboard and ann showed donald trump the way to pierce it, from my point of view, tragic consequences for the country, but great consequences for ann because she became really a kingmaker. And were going to dig into that. One of the main topics well touch on today is immigration and in terms of format this is just going to be an informal conversation. Now, both of you leading into the trump years and during the trump years have been immigration hawks, but since trump has been elected, you have converged on your views on the administrations views on policies, one of those big differences is on the wall itself. Ill start with you ann. First of all, what did it feel like to have the soon to be president reading your book, agreeing with a lot of your views and why do you think he has agreed with you on a lot of these topics . The strange thing is why no other republicans would just pick up this obviously popular issue. Americans, every time immigration has been put to a vote, i mean, going back to the70s, americans have voted for less Legal Immigration and a complete stop to ilLegal Immigration and its just like brexit, except weve been putting up with it since the70s. Its been decade after decade after decade. I completely agree with what david just said. This is what the Republican Party would not deliver. Now, when they run for office, oh, they promised to get tough on immigration. In many famous instances, one of the most egregious that i think was one of the many incidents that led to donald trump was in 2014, obamas president , republicans are a minority. How did republicans take a majority in the senate in 2014 . Well, that was when obama was threatening to issue his executive order on dreamers, which he had spent the previous four years telling immigration activist groups i cant do that, that would be unconstitutional. So the constitutional law professor himself said what he was doing by executive order was unconstitutional. Mitch mcconnell, the Republican Senatorial committee, lamar alexander, all of them go out and say vote for us and we will we have a lot of ways to block obamas executive amnesty. We go out, we vote for them, and did they follow through . No, they did not. They did absolutely nothing. And to this day, i mean, trump has done nothing either, but americans have been betrayed, betrayed, betrayed. It is weird that trump is the only one to say hey, i know, ill run on a popular issue. laughs lets go to david, you obviously disagree with what a lot of what the Trump Administration has been doing. One of those big things you disagree with is the wall. So first tell us why you think generally hes read the issue wrongly and why you think the wall is incorrect. For me, thats not one of my big problems with the Trump Administration. The wall is obviously a foolish idea. The airplane has been invented. But my dissent goes deeper. I mean, i see donald trump as hes a con man, hes a criminal, hes beholden to foreign interests, he shouldnt be president. My vision about why immigration was such an important issue was that if we are going to cope with what globalization has done to advance societies and not succumb to people like donald trump, not vote for things like brexit, you have to build a society with a stronger sense of national identity. Thicker bonds between citizens. So that means more social provision, its going to mean Something Like a National Health insurance program, something ive been an advocate of for now, a while. And you can only do that if people have an idea were not underwriting this for the planet or for whoever shows up, that the claim that were making upon each other is precisely a claim as citizens and that has to be by the way its very important that they be racially and ethnically neutral because americans will not vote for this as the matter of the supremacy of one group it another. And i watch with horror what donald trump everything he touches, he discredits. And his by the fact that he took up this issue and associated it with himself, that we now have made it more difficult to come up with a responsible approach to immigration. Immigration numbers actually went up during the trump years, especially in the first half of 2019, and we are going to make it more difficult therefore, to solve all the other problems that need to be solved if societies are to be saved from the kind of selfharm that so many societies are doing to themselves. Lets dig a little bit, can i respond to that, i think thats a beautiful point and it shouldnt be lost, your citizen point, that were part of a family, its the American Family and there have been studies on this that people are less inclined to vote for, you know, all kinds of social programs when they dont feel a connection, when theres diversity, its supposed to be such a wonderful thing. In fact, studies and the authors like the Robert Putnam study out of harvard, he was the bowling alone guy, he did study after study, people feel less cohesiveness the more diverse their town is, their community is, they participate less, theyre not interested in civic values. So i dont want davids point on the importance of feeling like were a family together, not exactly like your own family, you feel a little closer to your family, your neighbors, we are all americans. I think thats a great point. As for and that was exactly what i was worried about when trump came down the escalator, his second point, that trump has now discredited important ideas. I think thats not true. But that was absolutely the fear, which is why, even though two days after he came down the escalator with the mexican rapist speech as i fondly refer to it, i did go on with bill maher and said i think he would be the nominee, because at least he was talking about it, not in the terms i would have put it. He was talking about an issue that no other republican would raise. Sometimes, democrats would raise it, but not follow through so for a couple of weeks i wasnt for trump. For one thing i was expecting him to back away, but for another thing, i mean, i was rather concerned, is he going to raise this issue, hell lose because, you know, hes a coarse vulgarian, but they will claim he lost because of the issues. No, because he won, i will tell you the world has changed in a big way. I dont want him to hear this because im going to keep trolling him and attacking him until he fulfills his promises to the voters, but even if he doesnt fulfill his promises to the voters, which is an outrageous betrayal and should not be forgiven, even if he does not, the world has changed in a way that is im very sensitive to, i think if i say it, youll be sensitive to because back in the 2000s when mccain was pushing amnesty and bush was pushing amnesty, and then mccain comes or rubio runs for senate in florida, promising on his mothers life that he would not come out for amnesty, gets to the senate and whats the first thing he does . I got an amnesty bill. So after being betrayed, betrayed, betrayed, it could he could have queered the deal. It would have been blamed on him pushing popular issues. Back then in the 2000s, i could count on one hand the number of people in the conservative media. Who were with the voters on immigations. Most of the talk radio hosts, most of the conservative names and for the conservatives out there in the audience, names you would know that im not going to mention. They were absolutely, 100 for amnesty. There were dark days. We thought it was over, we had nobody on our side. That has changed, 180 degrees. Now, i drive around listening to talk radio, and radio hosts who not only never talked about immigration, but if they did, they were completely against or for amnesty, and for you know, we have to do this, we have to do that, how are we going to get the hispanic vote, now theyre practically reading from adios america, point after point after point. Look at how fox news has flipped. I mean that little episode i was just describing where republicans get us to vote for them in 2014, we vote for them because they promised to block obamas executive amnesty, they betray us. Mickey wrote an article, just recording what was on fox news primetime, every night, as democrats were filibustering the bill. Nothing about amnesty, fox was not alerting the troops, they wanted amnesty. Youll also recall probably because of immigration, rupert murddoch wanted to stop trump. It famously leaked before the first fox news debate that recuperate murdoch had called over and said this has gone on long enough. That was supposed to shut trump down and instead poll after poll after poll he won. Why . Because of immigration. applause but the story of the trump years is the story of the party that wins more and more of less and less. Its true that fox news and talk radio have consolidated behind the trump approach, but they are an ever dwindling part of america. The way this kind of change, a reknitting of the civic compact, strengthening bonds between citizens would ever happen, the way you would get social permission, the National Civic permission to enforce the law and to taper off the flow of numbers to a more sustainable level, which is not zero, by the way. Immigration is not a binary issue, its a matter of more or less and who and what kind and in what order the way you get that is with a law that is going to as daniel said about healthcare will pass the senate 7030 or it wont pass at all. The trump method, which is about selfseeking always, is about polarizing, because the only way he can mobilize people behind him is to make them so angry at their opponents that they dont look at him. And thats going on right now with this impeachment process. So where i think were going to end up, because of trump, is were going to end up with some executive action on immigration of a kind that has been so brutal as to radicalize in the opposite way people who might have potentially supported a humane approach, numbers have flowed now through the asylum seeking system rather than through the regular immigration system. And any kind of hope for a Cross Party Consensus has been broken. Republicans are radicalized behind their positions, democrats have been radicalized even more. The kinds of things if you quote things that barack obama said in his second book about immigration, people dont mention who the author was. People will be shocked because of where the Democratic Party was in 2007 on the immigration issue and where it is now. And thats something to do with the internal work of the Democratic Party, but its something to do with donald trump. We cant solve any problem, unless we have a strong sense of national cohesion, of not only solidarity, but sympathy, of respect for each other. We cant solve anything because of the its not a parliamentary system, things have to go through the house and the senate, they have to be enforced by the states, the agencies have to have buyin. You have to build a real consensus and if you have a governing approach that is about inflammation and rage and locking people ever deeper into their respective silos, so that they never so they trust their leaders no matter how defective those leaders are, nothing will be done and nothing has been done in the trump years on this issue or any other. It really is remarkable how thin the trump record is and it is thin, at least any public spirited act, hes done a lot of graft, but on the things that a president might want to do, he has gotten very little because he has not got the mechanism of leading the nation. Donald trump can never go on tv and speak to america because he doesnt know that place. He only knows his america and his america is becoming more isolated, and its becoming more a minority. applause i would disagree with that to the i think i dont disagree with your description of what has happened, but i think youre kind of blaming the victim. When everything trump does, even his reasonable things, even when he speaks well, ive never seen, its like a collective psychosis how liberals lose their minds. applause take something that i think and just, you know, hear me out, i think its a perfectly reasonable policy and it was upheld by the Supreme Court, a little spoiler alert there, but what was called the muslim ban. We are not required to take everyone from every country on earth. After the charlie hebdo, the concert massacre in paris, after san bernardino, after the pulse night club, i really im hardpressed to find a problem with trumps speech saying we need to take a pause in countries where terrorists that are on the state department terrorist watch list from muslim countries until we as he said can figure out what the hell is going on. I mean that seems eminently reasonable to me and instantly, i mean, for a week, all i saw on tv was, hes hitler, hes hitler, hes hitler. Then they enact it, New York Times for the First Time Ever published a Grove City College writer, explaining on the op ed page, it was called the travel ban, was unconstitutional, you cant do this, yeah upheld by the Supreme Court. Same thing with his wall funding. I mean, over and over again, he takes reasonable steps. The fact that he has hell and and has a very limited vocabulary really isnt a problem compared to republican after republican after republican lying to the voters, getting us to vote for them, and then betraying us. How do you have a democracy . Were watching it, feeling sorry for the british. What on earth is going on . They voted for brexit 2 years ago. Im telling you, weve been doing this for 40 years and thats why people got fed up and voted for trump and it is it is and if hes watching, youre doing a terrible job, mr. President , youve got to pedal to the metal on those promises, but if he werent donald trump, if his rally cry had not been at every single rally build the wall, if he were jeb, if he were president rubio, which, of course, could never happen, and had done the exact same things, i would think i had died and gone to heaven. So compared to any of the others, hes done stuff, but he hasnt done the stuff he has the Constitutional Authority to do and he could do. applause so what the muslim ban meant in real life was that if an American Family, citizens, who were muslim, wanted to have motherinlaw visit them to spend a few weeks with the grandchildren, she couldnt do that. What it meant was that if you were a company and you had an executive who came from one of the countries the plan originally was that it would apply to people of muslim faith from any country, and then a certain number of countries. If you had an executive or a skilled person that you wanted to rotate them in for a while, you couldnt do it. What you did was you attacked on the basis of a religious test, the commonalities that people had. And you drove people of many people were not especially political, to take a position on something that it never occurred to them their government could ever do. And one of the features of the trump years has been its launched the kind of mobilization of americans against americans in a way that we have never seen before. And heres a data point that drives that home. So 2010 was a big republican year, republicans won the house of representatives and one of the biggest flips in recent congressional history. Total number of votes cast. Look at the total number of votes cast in 2010 for republican candidates and look at the total number of votes cast in 2018. Republicans actually won more votes for the house than in 2018 than they won in 2010. Democrats won 9 million more votes than that. You have and what is going to happen in 2020 is youre going to have an unprecedented republican mobilization, but an even bigger and unprecedented democratic mobilization, everyone is being pulled into the political system by mutual antipathy and when that happens, nothing gets done. The muslim ban, theres no there was never any case for it. It was always a wicked and foolish thing to do, but it was also a deeply unwise thing to do because if the goal is to move to a system where we take more people with skills, fewer people without, we have better enforcement to make sure that people that are in the country have a right to be here, and we get a grip on total numbers and we stop treating the asylum system as a secondary immigration system, if thats the goal, you need a National Consensus behind it as you would need a